There is no single solution. No silver bullet, just silver buckshot.
There are several ways to approach it.
1. Talk to the neighbours but that's not always a good option.
2. Legally and morally no harm can come to the animal.
3. Physical means of control.
4. Long term behaviour change thanks to step 3.
Cat-ching, killing, hurting the cat are no viable options.
You have to annoy the cat more than it's habits annoy you.
Your going to read and find stuff like plant a lavender, that works. Bullshit it does.
The underlying theme to this stuff is the plants have to have unpleasant oils that will contact the cat, which of course annoys it when it has to clean itself. Those oils will only be released with agitation of the foliage. Eg, Brush a lavender and smell your skin. Fk all. Then crush the leaf and smell your skin. Oils are released and you smell now like a french harlets panties.
So the overall approach is to start planting ground covers like Oregano, thyme, corsican mint, ground cover lantana (A weed in Aust) . So you go to the garden centre and look through the herbs and do some weird leaf crushing and finger sniffing. I suggest this because often garden centre people are not adequately trained.
Then there is planting ground covers that are spiky like Shore Juniper (as an example)
Next, its not about one plant to get this to work. *insert rainbow hippy saying, "thesse are sso natural and jusst use a lavendahh and your cat will go away". You need fricken heaps of this sort of stuff everywhere in between plants and across the whole area. This cat can't avoid stepping on these. It has to get pissed off.
Cat licks itself clean and then has to lick the yucky oils off its paws etc. Soon works out where it's from and avoids the area. This is why the turps and petrol etc thing works as well. (but contaminates the soil and overall environment) Create behavioural change.
Down side is this isn't everyones cup of tea and it might not be possible to do with certain garden designs.
They take a **** and scratch over it. If its an open area, some plastic mesh or chook wire down across the ground stops them scratching over it. I shouldn't say pin down some barbed wire through there because that harms the cat.
Then there is somewhere on the market an infra red sensor equipped squirter/sprinkler thing. Cat sets it off and it squirts the cat. Great idea. Just water. No one gets hurt. It's a commercial product.
I also had a "Shuroo" on my old ute which was amazing. Cleared everything off the road at night except cattle. Occasionally if a cat got in front of it, it would spazz out trying to get away. A 12v system that I bet you could rig up to a battery and leave on overnight.
The solution is behavioural change, so it's you verses the cat. Strongest mind wins.
This works on a similar principle to the Shuroo.
https://www.pestrol.com.au/buy-onli...MIkdP3sp3V6QIVjraWCh05Mw0_EAQYASABEgJsCPD_BwE
This is the exact product I saw demonstrated at a trade expo:
https://www.amazon.com.au/62100-Enforcer-Activated-Sprinkler-Detection/dp/B009F1R0GC
